Work on show and for sale

The winner of the £10,000 Patron's Choice Award for the New Light Art Prize 2017.

‘The Lobby’ is located at 125 West 55th street in Manhattan, New York. By chance, Macquarie Group occupies part of the block. The subject was suggested by a small drawing and photos made in a warm late afternoon in September as employees were leaving the office. I scaled the work on the canvas to create a postmodern gothic altarpiece. The composition attempts to compress a skyscraper into a 100cm x 125cm canvas. A new icon for a temple of commerce. The painted window panels create a fleeting illusion of a glazed picture. The convex chrome overdoor and glass reflect the buildings, restaurant umbrellas and a NYC street lamp across the street, so we can see behind us. Office lights and car lamps add points of glow, distorted mirror images, all slightly “delirious” as they morph inside the polished façade. Perspective takes us into the glass wall at the opposite end of the lobby space with its florescent reception desk light panel reflecting in all directions. Above the revolving door is part of the reversed exit sign (“TIX”) in red. But human stories emerge. Someone, possibly a delivery driver, is leaving with a phone to his ear while a woman waits inside. In an office above the lobby a conversation suggests a deal being discussed in a frozen mime. Parallel narratives of participants inside an electric gilded space. All these activities are framed by boundary lines both real and social, vertical and horizontal; a tableau of commonplace corporate and human needs in a familiar high-rise space that is surprisingly unreal.David Chandler
‘The Lobby'Acrylic on canvas127x102cm£5000